Procurement scheduling in engineer procure construct projects: A comparison of three fuzzy modelling approaches

Procurement stage connects engineering and construction stages of engineer procure construct (EPC) projects. Scientific materials management is vital to ensure timely material availability to reduce inventory shortage and holding costs. Procurement scheduling of such projects is challenging due to imprecise estimation of activity durations and lead times and stage budget constraints. Fuzzy modelling can incorporate and analyse such imprecise data. In literature multiple fuzzy approaches are applied in different contexts. But a study which provides roadmap to select best solution approach in absence of standardized methodologies and benchmark results in EPC projects is missing. This study compares three fuzzy modelling approaches: crisp approach, fuzzy multi-objective (FMO) approach and crisp multi-objective (CMO) approach based on manner and extent to which they exploit available fuzzy information, computational efficiency and concurrence of results. Results reveal that crisp approach is computationally efficient, FMO approach leverages fuzzy information maximum and CMO approach closely aligns with managerial intuition.